Fifty
Jennifer drove alone to the roadside park where Dimitri
Carvelli had been executed, and where John had tested Craig Netherman’s
skill and attitude, an alliance he could not have done without. Working
with a partner had been a new experience. Not a day had gone by since
meeting Jennifer Wessner without a new experience. For the first time in
his life, life itself had become a new experience conducted on a moment to
moment basis. He had once feared the unknown. Now, he cherished every
minute of it.
Jennifer had parked against a magnificent wall of
trees, and she sat on the hood to wait for John's final meeting
with the man who had once been the bane of his life.
Garko arrived alone looking frail and vulnerable. John
smiled as he approached.
“John, you have me badly worried. I can’t ever
remember seeing you smile. I can’t imagine what it may portend.”
They sat at a nearby park bench. Garko grabbed
for a stem of stiff grass and nervously picked at his teeth. “That’s
her?” he said with a casual gesture to the girl waiting in the near
distance.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“Jailbait in the extreme.”
“No shit.”
“She’s an absolute doll. You’ve taken good care of her. Can’t
say I’m not proud of you. I hated what the hood did to you, John. I
hated using you. Do you know that, or do you need to even the score with
me?”
“You treated me with respect, Mr. Garko. I expected nothing
more of you. Neither one of us could help the rest of it.”
“So, was it Bertrand?”
John shook his head slowly, emphatically. “Bertrand’s totally clueless.”
Garko studied him with a glimmer of his old
calculating intensity. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Someone acting in
Bartow’s behalf, someone not apt to try again with Bartow’s head on the
chopping block?”
“Bertrand seems to have
been the target, not
Jennifer or Evelyn Haxx. The girls were bait. Bertrand, Dimitri, Senator Hacks, and
I'm betting the Disciples of
Chaos, all of them taken out of commission in one fell swoop. The
rest of us were pawns, and I think Jennifer and I was turned loose by the chess master
himself. He at least bothered with us, which I thought was kinda
cool."
Garko chuckled. “John, you’re not making the slightest sense.”
John wasn’t certain he could express his suspicions
in a way Garko could understand, or would accept. “The natural order of
things. Nature is full of deceit, lies, violence.”
“You talking about the Disciples of Chaos? I know all about those
freaks. I had one of them spell it out to me before I broke both his
legs.”
“The Disciples of Chaos made a virtue of the natural
order," John said, "which is the antithesis to conventional wisdom that bans it from human
affairs, and along with it, the natural checks and balances that sustain
life in this world.”
Garko stared at him without expression.
“Someone attends to both until we can do it ourselves.
They spell it out for us. I don't think many notice.”
“Someone. Like aliens from outer space?”
“Hardly matters. What matters is that
circumstance managed to terminate Dimitri Carvelli."
“He needed killing.”
“Yes. And what happened to Carvelli’s connection to
the mob?”
“Things change,” Garko said grimly.
“For the better?”
“The mob’s hold is slipping. Time’s are changing.
Keep going, John. What else happened?”
“A controlled chain-reaction. Jennifer was thrown in
Bertrand Bartow's face and she undermined his empire.
He’ll watch his back from here on out knowing she's out here somewhere. Caliph Hacks wanted
to be president someday. Won’t happen now because the raid on his ranch got
out and the media’s scrutiny has damaged his reputation. It goes all the
way down to our individual lives, Jennifer’s friends heading for a bad
end, you and me, killers talking civil in a place with trees. Me with the
only kid on the face of the Earth who could have made me want to live
another day. Some of us died, but none of us escaped being touched by
ordinary chains of events set in motion by someone who knows what they are
doing."
Garko studied him for a time. “You’re a smart man,
John, but I think you’re reaching too far. I think you’re seeing
connections where they don’t exist because you can’t see the simple ones
that do. Ordinary people couldn’t manage the kind of orchestration you’re
talking about. They’d have to be aliens from outer space. Or worse.”
“Why do you think that?”
“We’re all part of the system,” Garko said. “No
system can transcend itself. Got that from a college physics class an age
or two ago. A man named Gödel. Your puppet masters would have to
outsiders to human affairs to understand us so well. Maybe it’s time to
start going to church."
John shrugged. He had no intention of arguing the
point. “I just thought you should know.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, John. I’ve never known
a man more dangerous than yourself. I don’t know anyone who’s taught me
more about life. If you ever get this idea of yours worked out so that I
can swallow it without choking, write it down and mail me a copy.”
Garko stood, ready to leave. John held out his
hand. Garko shook it without a word and stood watching John return to
Jennifer and their car and drive away. He then sat back down and enjoyed
the later summer afternoon until dusk, and then he, too, still lost in
deep thought, left for another place in another day.
